Perhaps two years ago, I remember having a conversation with the folks at Reprise Media. We haven't spoken much since, which is unfortunate, given how much I respect their business and the principles as people. At this particular show, they were just unveiling a new product aimed at content owners who wanted to leverage search to drive more visitors. It was especially geared towards newspaper sites who produce timely and ever changing material. I believe the client they had at the time was the NYTimes (or a similar publication), and I thought it was great application of their technology and expertise, along with a way to generate truly relevant ads.

I was reminded of Reprise when reading my Gmail and seeing the following ad.

The above, though, is definitely not Reprise Media. Instead, it is an affiliate of World Avenue, fka The Useful. Clicking on the ad will take you to the following landing page - Those familiar with arbitrage will recognize the look and feel right away. Even reading the ad text, I had a pretty good idea that the ultimate aim of the site would be driving conversions for an incentive promotion offer. And, sure enough it does. It says so right on the landing page - "Get a free gift just for participating" and "Enter your zip code on the next page to continue." A click on either yes or no leads you here, to the World Avenue run site:

Part of me was surprised to find this ad and landing page combo still running. It's part of dying breed of search strategies to promote incentive promotion offers. They are plenty of other sites still leveraging the quiz format in their ad text and and landing page, most notably larger content sites like NewsMax.com and LifeScript. Google has done a pretty effective job of shutting down thin affiliate sites like these.

Sites like these used to work well up until about the middle of 2006 I believe. I remember a period around that time when one affiliate network offered a huge price increase on a Blockbuster offer. Within days, the search results were littered with thin affiliate pages, each slightly different from the next, some

When looking at Votethenews, it seems like they might have some infrastructure. (You wouldn't guess as much given that hey don't have anything loaded on the index page). The page design screams template (not always a bad thing, i.e., potential sophistication). The linking structure seems automatically generated as well. Look at the bottom and you see George Carlin Information | Bio | News | Privacy Policy | Disclosure Information | George Carlin on Wikipedia. The first two and last look as though they get swapped out automatically based on the template. It wouldn't be too far off to think that the company behind this, Traffic Ignite (according to who is information) has built hundreds of similar pages.

Clicking on a few of the links, though, suggests something different. They have the right link structure (http://www.voteonthenews.com/carlin/google/info.html), but unfortunately the content is for another one of their survey pages - an Iraq War Poll. In structure, it looks just like their phony voting system, which judging by the link - http://www.voteonthenews.com/carlin/google/vote.php - would seem as those they conduct an actual poll. Clicking on the vote.php page simply frames the incentive promotion offer. With the "info" page, there isn't a framed page simply the wrong content. It was rushed, sloppy, and lazy.

On a whim, I changed http://www.voteonthenews.com/carlin/google/info.html to http://www.voteonthenews.com/iraq/google/info.html and it returned the expected page, the "poll" for the Iraq War. Another sign of their sloppiness is at the bottom of the page. On the Carlin page, you will find this under the links:

Disclaimer: this website is not endorsed by, nor does it have any
connection with, Tila Tequila, or any of the individuals, parties, or
organizations named or quoted herein. This poll is for entertainment
only and is not scientifically valid.

The Iraqi page has the following:

Disclaimer: this website is not endorsed by, nor does it have any
connection with, Beyonce Knowles, or any of the individuals, parties,
or organizations named or quoted herein. This poll is for entertainment
only and is not scientifically valid.

Votethenews.com isn't just a question of thin affiliate. It's a glaring
example of why Google hates affiliate marketing and is all too happy to
create policies that wipe out legitimate affiliates, ones who have
built out full content sites, real trivia functionality, and have
expenses beyond one person's time for an hour while they modify a
page for the latest newsworthy keyword.

I support affiliate marketing and am a big fan of arbitrage. But, execution like this is taking the easy way out and damaging legitimate companies, because in Google's eyes, they look the same. And, it doesn't help either that the subject matter is a sensitive one and such an ad looks tactless.

As for the George Carlin ad run by a newspaper, that I found by doing a search on Google itself -